Rhetor-in-residence

Over the next few weeks I will be writing about a project that is part of my dissertation work. The project is called the Better Clemson App, and though it is not really an app in the downloadable sense, it is a web-based app that offers tools for learning and change. My students theorize, invent, and build-out the project in the same way an app might come into fruition. This will be the fourth time I have assigned the project, which challenges my rhetoric and composition students to work collaboratively to think about problems on our Clemson campus and theorize how we might solve them. The goal is to turn the app user into a change agent by both persuading the user and giving them the agency to act. We design the app for mobile devices with the intention of utilizing ubiquitous computing to effect user mobility; that is, we want to draw the user out into the spaces and places we are theorizing.

It must be said that my students have difficulty admitting that we have problems on our campus, that we are operating in spaces of inequality and injustice, and that they might have agency in moving towards a solution. My students have taken on parking, access, dietary concerns, football ticket shortages, diversity, and transportation design among many other problems. But through this project, students have the opportunity to think about the places in which we dwell, and how we might better attend to them.

Where is VR going? This is the question that's playing out in new media as we see more an more projects testing the affordances and constraints of this new medium. Recently members of Vegan Outreach visited Clemson University campus to share the i-animal VR project, which takes the viewer on a tour of an industrial slaughter house. Yes, there will be blood. But will there be converts? Faunalytics, an outside research group is currently gathering data about the effect of this VR video on its user.

At Clemson, you have the opportunity to test how VR might fit into your curriculum. We have a range of VR cameras available for student use in the library, video editing software available through Adobe Creative Cloud, a super-cool annotation software called ThingLink that lets you add hyperlinks to your images, and plenty of support to aid your implementation.The question for you is how might this tool be used to communicate STEM research and STEM awareness?

Here at Clemson Geopaths, students have used VR to communicate the work they are doing in Dominica. www.thinglink.com/video/935303955276103682 This ThingLink is a great example of how this new medium works and might pique your interest as to its application in your own work.

For more information about VR at Clemson and how you might get involved, visit:

​Little did the Greek inventor Archimedes know...that when he invented the elevator around 236 BC, he also created the perfect space for making your fantasies come true.

Of course I'm talking about one of the most powerful bits of rhetoric ever invented: the elevator pitch...the perfect rhetorical vehicle for realizing your fantasies.

​Actually, it was Aristotle, some hundred years pre-elevator, who first theorized the elevator pitch, what rhetoricians refer to as stasis theory. In the Roman period, Cicero and Quintillion also did work developing stasis theory.

Stasis theory helps the rhetor come to a fixed (static) place and is a great example of what we rhetors mean by the "available means of persuasion." It is so important that rhetors in ancient times would commit stasis theory to memory - that way they would always have the best way to organize their words and improve the likelihood of getting what they wanted.

The version of stasis theory I'm going to talk about has four parts. 1. conjecture 2. definition 3. quality 4. policy

Before I tell you what this all means and how to think about it, I want you to know that I use stasis theory with my students ALL the time. My students use it to both write proposals and to make presentations, eventually coming to see it as an important critical thinking tool for figuring out what they think and why they thunk it.

Here is how I use it in my classroom: 1. conjecture - what's your claim, or what do you want?2. definition - get specific, here. flesh out your meaning. qualify.3. quality - why is this important?4. policy - what's your plan? what can this do for the listener?

In class, I only give my students one minute to work through stasis theory before they show their work. Waste not time - the new Otises are nimble. By the end of the year, my students also have stasis theory committed to memory and can speak with confidence and clarity using "the available means of persuasion."

This weekend, I had the opportunity to wander up the Savanah River basin from the port of Savannah all the way up to the Savanah River Site. I took some photos/filmed with my Cannon 6i and my Fly 360 Camera. This is all part of my project focused on thinking and writing about Posthuman ecologies. I stepped on fire ants in three different locations--some people never learn.

Author

Stephen Quigley is a PhD student in ClemsonRCID (Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design) He specializes in digital composition pedagogy and theory helping a wide range of individuals to communicate their message using digital tools.